The CTO Advisor himself, Keith Townsend, will be at Tech Field Day next week. He’s looking forward to getting an update from Actifio. Since he last saw them at Storage Field Day in 2014, the company has moved from what Keith calls a copy-data focus to secondary data. With the recent investment boom in the segment, Keith is interested to hear more about their updated strategy.

Gian Paolo Boarina returned from his first Networking Field Day event having seen presentations from eight different companies. The topics ranged from network visibility, to analytics, intent-based networking, SDN, and more. We’re looking forward to hearing Gian’s impressions of each!

We were very excited to be able to have Gian Paolo Boarina join us at Networking Field Day last week. We’re looking forward to seeing his reactions to the presenting companies after his first event. It’s always interesting to get the perspective of someone drinking straight from the firehose for the first time.

Gian Paolo got a look at Veriflow’s formal verification of networks at Networking Field Day last week. This works by collecting control plane information, not actual data or flows, to build a normalized model of how the network should be operating. This can be used with their policy tools to create an intent-based networking solution. Gian was impressed (calling it “a great product), but would like to see integration with Netflow/IPFIX data to validate the models on their roadmap.

DataCore Software is presenting at their first Tech Field Day event next week. Matt Crape found this a little surprising since the company has been around for almost twenty years, and has been a player in the storage virtualization market with SANsymphony since 2011. At first look, Matt found running on Windows Server to be an odd choice for SANsymphony, but ultimately makes the case that the ecosystem support makes sense for the product. Since SANsymphony gets the drivers support of Windows, what you’re left with is a robust, extensible, software-based solution.

Raff Poltronieri last heard from Actifio last year at Tech Field Day in Boston. Next week he’ll have a chance to get caught up with them in Silicon Valley. Raff found it extremely versatile when he first saw it last year, and this time around, he’s looking forward to a deeper look at their Enterprise Data-as-a-Service platform. He’s also interested in some use case applications, particularly disaster recovery.

Daniel Kuchenski got a crash course in formal verification from Veriflow’s recent Networking Field Day presentation. Using a collector VM, Veriflow sends the operational state of networking devices to their verification engine. This formally verifies that the network is operating as intended. Veriflow recently released CloudPredict, which allows you to extend this modeling to AWS. All told, it was one of Daniel’s favorite presentations from the event.

Mike Preston is less concerned whether NetApp’s recently announced hyperconverged infrastructure solution is “true” HCI as much as he cares if their blend of software and hardware can help him solve problems. To that effect, Mike gives his thoughts on the overall solution. He found the solutions uniquely scalable, which when combined with SolidFire QoS and “automation sauce” makes for an intriguing offering, no matter how you classify it.

It’s always exciting to have Raff Poltronieri return for another Tech Field Day event. He’s excited to meet the three new delegates in attendance, and offers some basic words of advice for the event. He and all the other delegates can look forward to drinking directly from the IT fire hose from the presenting companies next week!

At Networking Field Day, Veriflow demonstrated bringing intent-based network verification to the enterprise. Drew Conry-Murray looks at these features, which include using formal verification to build software models to see if your on-site and cloud networks are performing as you intended. Drew likes the fact that its designed for networks as they exist, not positing hypothetical networks an engineer has no way of building within an organization. Ultimately, using these software models puts the onus on organizations to use them effectively for managing networks.

Keith Townsend is looking forward to hearing from Scale Computing at next week’s Tech Field Day event. He was introduced to the company at Storage Field Day back in 2014, and the landscape for virtualization and HCI has changed substantially in the interim. Keith is interested to hear how the company plans to move into the larger enterprise market, a departure from their previous SMB market focus.

Aside from being the king of swag at industry trade shows, Chris Bradshaw reviews what makes Rubrik worthy of industry buzz. At VMworld, he got to speak with co-founder and CEO Bipul Sinha and Jerry Rijnbeek, Director of Sales Engineering. By owning the entire backup stack, Rubrik is able to quickly allow organizations to implement backup protections and get back to operations in the event of an outage.

Make sure to checkout Becky Elliott’s post detailing her highlights from her first VMworld. The event can be an overwhelming experience even for seasoned vets, but Becky came through the experience excited to do homework based on the sessions attended and, most importantly, a Tech Field Day delegate!

Karel Novak will join us for another Tech Field Day event next week, after attending one in Austin earlier this year. It’s always exciting to have him on board. For our non-Czech readers, here’s a translation of his announcement post: https://tinyurl.com/yabw5nka

It’s always exciting to have new delegates coming to an event. For Tech Field Day next week, we have the privilege to include Ian Sanderson to our delegates. He’ll be getting to drink directly from the IT firehose, with presentations from Actifio, Cisco, DataCore Software, Ixia, Riverbed, Scale Computing, and Skyport Systems.

Networking Field Day just wrapped up earlier this month, but Ivan Pepelnjak already has his initial impressions in order. He nominated Avi Freedman from Kentik as winner of the “Nerd Factor” category for the event, with a close runner up from Apstra. The formal verification for networks from Veriflow also merited an initial mention. We’re looking forward to reading more from Ivan on each.

Jonathan Davis continues his dive into Cape Networks in this post. He remains impressed by their capability not to simply diagnose WiFi, but also to provide client-side monitoring for external websites. This include more than simply being available, but includes latency and HTTP status codes. This can be used as another data point in your wireless toolkit.

John Herbert takes a look at the design behind the new Aruba 8400 switch and why little things like airflow and linecard layout can help solve manufacturing issues. He also discusses how the new generation of switches like the 8400 can bring increased performance to locations that may not have the support of a full datacenter environment.

Dan Frith gives a look at X-IO’s Portable Axellio Edge Computing System, which is designed to allow for easily transferring edge computing data via a luggable form factor. This separates compute resources into a large hard case for checking on a flight, with NVMe drives in a smaller carry-on case. It may not be the easiest way to travel, but sometimes using old fashioned sneakernet is the most secure way to move your data.

Alex Galbraith reflects on the influence of Docker, a post originally began after their Tech Field Day presentation from November. He’s recently seen the change in perception from an OS-centric view of the world to a more services oriented approach from a number of people. it seems that year of Docker hype are becoming a reality. Alex cites the increasing desire for organizations to automate code deployment pipelines and overall platform security as some of the more prevalent reasons for the switch.